Focus On Hot Beverages

Intensive promotion has slashed the value of leading coffee brands, and trouble is brewing for tea volumes – but hot chocolate is on the up. Is hot beverages in hot water, asks Cathy Relf

When riots broke out last month, some Brits reached for brooms. A significant number of others turned to the teapot.

Within hours of the first unrest, a Facebook group called Operation Cup of Tea was calling on people to forego rioting in favour of staying in with a brew. By midday the page had 10,000 members. By 8.30pm, 100,000.

Both Yorkshire Tea and Teapigs served up fresh cuppas to volunteers cleaning London’s worst-hit streets. With tea so much a part of the national psyche, you’d think the sector would be in amazing shape.

But while our once favourite brew still accounts for 37% of all UK hot beverage consumption, tea sales have slipped 0.2% over the past year by volume – and its 8.3% value growth can largely be attributed to commodity-driven retail price rises.

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